Monday, September 29, 2008

You've dealt with The Prophecy; now try your hand with The Riddle. And just FYI, I had originally penned an elaborate backstory involving the Sphinx, but after reading it back to myself I decided it was too ridiculous even by my standards. So here, free of any contrived set-up (and as a tribute to a favorite book from my youth), is today's Grand Finale Puzzle:

(click image to enlarge)

Puzzle Note: The answer to the riddle is a Dodger. And as usual, if you think you might have the right answer but are not sure, then you almost certainly do not have the right answer (or at least not the right reasoning).

Puzzle Rules: Comment freely in the thread, but if you have the solution, please don't give it away to everyone in the comments section. Instead, do the following:

Email us with the name of the Dodger player who is the answer, along with your reasoning (answers arrived at via luck or the wrong reasoning, even if correct, count for participation credit only). And please include your screen name somewhere in the email; and

Post a comment simply saying you have emailed your solution attempt. I may not be able to reply to your original email promptly, so please do be patient and check back on the comment thread for the latest news; I will confirm correct answers there.

Hint #1 (9:02am PT): This isn't a word puzzle in the sense that the Nostradamus Prophecy puzzle was a word puzzle. In fact it's pretty dissimilar to any previous puzzle. And every line of the riddle is fairly significant.

Hint #2 (10:21am PT): I sort of envision this puzzle being solved in three stages. If we were to number the lines of the Riddle from 1 to 20 (i.e., the book quote would comprise lines 6 through 15), roughly but not exactly speaking, lines 1-4 apply to Stage I, lines 5-16 5-17 to Stage II, and lines 17-20 18-20 to Stage III.

Hint #3 (11:27am PT): Once you get Stage I, the rest should flow more easily. The key is to figure out who/what "the infant boys" are and what "crowd" they are scattered in. Anyone who visits this site is certainly familiar with the "crowd" and likely has seen one or more of the "infant boys" before (cryptic enough for ya?) There should be enough clues in the riddle (particularly lines 1, 2, and 3) to figure this part out, and once you do it'll all make sense.

Hint #4 (11:50am PT): The infant boys are not people, although they may have people in them.

Hint #5 (12:54pm PT): Maybe you should focus first on figuring out what "the crowd of 3,000" is. So to paraphrase the first 3 lines of the Riddle: what consists of approx 3,000 things (although I doubt anyone's counting...) that are no more than 2 years old (if you do the math it works out to about 4 or 5 'newborns' per day) and were begotten from "the minds of 7 grooms of 7 brides", and that visitors to this site would be familiar with? And forget that the ultimate answer is a Dodger - although that is true, it won't help you solve the puzzle.

Hint #6 (2:08pm PT): For those who have figured out what the crowd represents and are looking for the 10 infant boys (i.e., you are in Stage II), there are two separate sets of clues to help you here. One set is related to the book excerpt (you don't have to know anything about the book itself) and the other set is from the zodiac signs. But don't neglect lines 18-19 or even if you find the infant boys it won't mean anything to you.

Hint #7 (3:38pm PT): For those looking for the infant boys: Agatha can help you with the keywords

MSTI, if you're correct then I'm impressed you got the concept so quickly. I look forward to further updates on your progress...

Karina, I didn't know who the Seven Chinese brothers were, but doing some quick internet research shows me it's an R.E.M. song, and a Chinese tale. I wasn't familiar with either until now, so I guess the answer is no, it's not related.

DanGarion, haven't heard from you in awhile. Glad to see you seem to still be married to the same woman.

Jose, sorry, your solution is not correct. You are however are correct about the first part, and have thus entered Stage II of the puzzle along with MSTI, DanGarion, and I think Neeebs, probably among others.